Gap, Inc., 2000

Abstract

From humble beginnings as a Levi jeans store, by 2000 Gap, Inc. had grown to become the world's leading specialist clothing retailer. Its CEO, Millard S. Drexler, the "merchant prince," was credited with transforming Gap into a global empire, leading the company through eighteen years of 21% p.a. growth to reach sales of $13.6 billion in 2000. Gap had expanded to 2,848 stores under its three brands: Gap, Banana Republic, and Old Navy, and controlled 6% of U.S. apparel sales. Drexel had also pushed Gap through a global expansion program, and international accounted for 12.5% of total sales in 2000.
But as Gap entered the new millennium, dark clouds were building on the horizon. While sales in 2000 were up nearly 18% over the previous year, operating profits fell by 20%, only the second profit fall since 1984. Gap found itself plagued with concerns about fashion misses, logistics failures, the departure of senior managers, and increased foreign competition. New fast-fashion competition in the form of Inditex, H&M, and Club Monaco threatened Gap's market share both domestically and abroad.
Drexler remained confident of recovery and promised to fix infrastructure problems and recent fashion misses while expanding the high-growth GapBody and BabyGap concepts. Would these changes be enough to keep Gap competitive in a new retail era?

Related Work

From humble beginnings as a Levi jeans store, by 2000 Gap, Inc. had grown to become the world's leading specialist clothing retailer. Its CEO, Millard S. Drexler, the "merchant prince," was credited with transforming Gap into a global empire, leading the company through eighteen years of 21% p.a. growth to reach sales of $13.6 billion in 2000. Gap had expanded to 2,848 stores under its three brands: Gap, Banana Republic, and Old Navy, and controlled 6% of U.S. apparel sales. Drexel had also pushed Gap through a global expansion program, and international accounted for 12.5% of total sales in 2000.
But as Gap entered the new millennium, dark clouds were building on the horizon. While sales in 2000 were up nearly 18% over the previous year, operating profits fell by 20%, only the second profit fall since 1984. Gap found itself plagued with concerns about fashion misses, logistics failures, the departure of senior managers, and increased foreign competition. New fast-fashion competition in the form of Inditex, H&M, and Club Monaco threatened Gap's market share both domestically and abroad.
Drexler remained confident of recovery and promised to fix infrastructure problems and recent fashion misses while expanding the high-growth GapBody and BabyGap concepts. Would these changes be enough to keep Gap competitive in a new retail era?

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In 2015, Canadian-based High Liner Foods Ltd was one of North America's largest frozen fish processors with extensive shares of both the food service and retail channels in Canada, the USA and Mexico. With over C$1 billion in revenues, the company had grown four fold in the previous decade. President and CEO Henry Demone was pleased with recent progress, but things had not always been so good. As he approached retirement after 25 years as president, 61 year-old Demone reflected on the company's past challenges. When he first took office in 1989, High Liner operated Canada's largest fishing fleet, operating within the country's newly established 200 mile limit into the Atlantic. But storms were on the horizon. To conserve fish stocks, the Canadian government first cut fishing quotas by 12% and then followed this up with more draconian cuts. Demone recalled, "Imagine a paper company, if 95 percent of the forest disappeared." In response, Demone took High Liner out of the fish harvesting business and focused on processing fish. In 2015, the company imported fish from hundreds of suppliers around the world and was a leading supplier of frozen fillets and value-added fish products to retailers and food service distributors throughout North America.
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